Big East Conference trying to garner support for raising of exit fees to prevent more defections

William Perlman/The Star-LedgerBig East commissioner John Marinatto is trying to garner support for raising exit fees among league members, so as to prevent another round of defections.

One day after the Big East sustained another loss, the league's presidents huddled once again, on a morning conference call.

While reports late Thursday night speculated that invitations to potential new league members would be discussed — or even handed out — that turned out not to be the case. According to one person familiar with the topics discussed on the call, the talk was not about expansion, but raising the exit fee to leave the Big East.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because internal league matters are not to be discussed publicly.

The Big East's current exit fee is $5 million, but with the recent defections of Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the Atlantic Coast Conference, there has been serious talk of raising it significantly. While no new exit fee number was set on the morning call, there appears to be unanimous support in raising it, so as to prevent further schools from bolting to other conferences.

However, there is a caveat, in that exit fees have been perceived as minor obstacles in the way of conference jumping. Late last month, when it appeared that the Big 12 Conference was going to break apart, the league was able to survive at the last minute when it was able to secure the pledges from schools with the understanding that the conference would hold the TV rights for an extended period of time.

Many estimate the those rights can be worth four to five times what a school would pay in exit fees. In the Big East's case, with a relatively modest $5 million exit fee, TV rights could be worth up to 10 times that amount.

So far, none of the conferences remaining football members have pledged their TV rights to the Big East.

All of this comes one day after the Big East's latest black eye — the defection of TCU, which had not even officially joined the league yet, to the Big 12. Set to join the league in 2012, the Fort Worth, Tex.-based university read the writing on the wall when Pittsburgh and Syracuse left and began working with an eye towards staying in its natural territory in the Texas-Oklahoma region.

With the loss of TCU, that leaves the Big East at only six member football schools and 14 member basketball schools once Syracuse and Pittsburgh exit.

People closely involved with the league have indicated that the Big East would have to move quickly in order to keep the football schools from leaving for other conferences. One scenario was that the Big East would have Villanova move its football program up from FCS (formerly Division 1-A) to join the league alongside Temple and Central Florida (which would come aboard for all sports). Rounding out the football side, would be Navy, which would join for that sport only, giving the Big East a 10-team football conference.

Multiple individuals, who asked to remain anonymous because they did not want to speak on the record about such matters, said that the Big East would act quickly on the expansion front — perhaps within the week.